SICStus Objects is an extension to SICStus Prolog for flexible structuring, sharing and reuse of knowledge in large logic programming applications. It enhances Prolog with an expressive and efficient object-oriented programming component.
SICStus Objects is based on the notion of prototypes. In object-oriented programming a prototype is an object that represents a typical behavior of a certain concept. A prototype can be used as is or as a model to construct other objects that share some of the characteristics of the prototypical object. These specialized objects can themselves become prototypes used to construct other objects and so forth. The basic mechanism for sharing is by inheritance and delegation. Inheritance is known for most readers. By using the delegation mechanism an object can forward a message to another object to invoke a method defined by the recipient but interpreted in the context of the sender.
In SICStus Objects, an object is a named collection of predicate definitions. In this sense an object is similar to a Prolog module. The object system can be seen as an extension of SICStus Prolog's module system. In addition an object may have attributes that are modifiable. Predicate definitions belonging to an object are called methods. So, an object is conceptually a named collection of methods and attributes. Some of the methods defined for an object need not be stored explicitly within the object, but are rather shared with other objects by the inheritance mechanism.
The Object system allows objects to be defined in a file, or dynamically created during the execution of a program. Objects defined in a file are integrated into SICStus Prolog in a way similar to definite clause grammars. That is to say, objects have a specific syntax as Prolog terms, and can be loaded and expanded into Prolog code. When an object is created, during load-time, or run-time, it inherits the methods and attributes of its prototypical object(s). Objects defined in a file can be either static or dynamic. Also, methods can be either dynamic or static. these properties are inherited by sub-objects. Objects created during execution are dynamic.
The inheritance mechanism is implemented using the importation
mechanism of the module system. The default inheritance is an
inheritance by overriding mechanism, which means that if a method
is defined locally, and the same method is defined in a super-object,
then the clauses of the super-method are not part of the
definition of the local one. As usual in Prolog, methods can be
nondeterminately defined, and alternative answers can be retrieved
through backtracking. Using the delegation mechanism, other
methods for knowledge sharing can be implemented by the user. In
SICStus Objects, there is an initial prototypical proto-object called
object, from which other objects may be constructed, directly or
indirectly.